In a business computing environment, database management systems are frequently used to administer and control information relating to complex business functions, such as inventory management, purchasing and receiving. Additionally, while certain components of a business computing environment may control “live” operations, other components may be used for planning and forecasting purposes. From time to time, business planning systems may interact with “live” systems. For example, when a product order is received in a live system, the live system may update the planning system, so that future plans and forecasts are based on the most up to date information. Similarly, business activities that are planned to occur, such as a recurring order from a long-term customer, may be transmitted from the planning system to the live system.
When a live system and a planning system both attempt to issue an update to the same business object, inconsistencies in the underlying information describing the business object may be inadvertently created. This may happen, for example, when conflicting orders for a specific product are generated by the live system and the planning system simultaneously.
FIG. 2 illustrates the problem of conflicting orders generated by parallel business management systems. System 205 may correspond to a live system; and system 255 may correspond to a planning system, for example. Initially, both systems include identical versions of purchase order #4711. In system 205, purchase order #4711 indicates that 10 units have been ordered (210). Similarly, in system 255, purchase order #4711 also indicates that 10 units have been ordered (260).
Then, virtually simultaneously (but possibly for different reasons), order changes are received within each system. In system 205, the number of units has been changed from 10 to 12 (220). However, in system 255, the number of units has been changed from 10 to 9 (270). Each system then attempts to transmit the order change to the other system, i.e., to synchronize. The result is confusion. Both systems receive updates simultaneously, and accordingly both systems respond by updating their internal information. System 205 ends up showing that 9 units have been ordered (230), while system 255 indicates that 12 units have been ordered (280). It is possible that both system 205 and system 255 will then simultaneously inform each other that an order has changed yet again, and an endless update loop may be created. Similar inconsistencies may arise between system 205 and system 255 when other kinds of changes to a business object are made in parallel.
Business computing environments are not the only situations where conflicting parallel operations may create inconsistencies between cooperating systems. Data synchronization difficulties may exist whenever updates to an object may be distributed across different computing systems, particularly when one system uses one record or data locking technique and another system uses another record locking technique.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a system and method to manage independent simultaneous updates to an object that is distributed across multiple computing systems.